Rich Lyons, Former Business School Dean, Named Next Berkeley Chancellor

Rich Lyons, an economist and former dean of the Haas School of Business, will be the next chancellor of the University of California (UC), Berkeley, according to an announcement from the UC Board of Regents.

Lyons was unanimously confirmed by the board and is the first Berkeley undergraduate alum in almost a century to be the chancellor of the university.

“No institution has come anywhere close to Berkeley in terms of shaping my life,” Lyons said in the announcement.

“There’s this favorite phrase of mine: ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’ Neither of my parents had a four-year degree when I arrived at Berkeley. For so many reasons, in so many ways, I could have never seen the life I have lived were it not for my undergraduate years at Berkeley.”

Lyons graduated from Berkeley in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in business and finance before pursuing his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1993 as a professor of economics and finance and became the dean of the Haas School of Business in 2008.

In 2020, Lyons became the university’s first chief officer of innovation and entrepreneurship. He worked to expand Berkeley’s activities, including the Berkeley Changemaker program, which is a leadership training program.

He will succeed current Chancellor Carol Christ on July 1, 2024. Christ announced her retirement last June, saying she planned to stay through the end of the 2023-2024 academic year.

“I am both thrilled and reassured by this excellent choice. In so many ways, Rich embodies Berkeley’s very best attributes, and his dedication to the university’s public mission and values could not be stronger,” Christ said in the release. “I am confident he will bring to the office visionary aspirations for Berkeley’s future that are informed by, and deeply respectful of, our past.”